280mm

I was born in 1945, just after the end of the war. The "Baby Boom" generation didn't officially start until 1946, so I didn't have to go through life with a label. That's good.

Sometime around 1950 - 51, my parents bought a fancy, state of the art, 12 inch, black and white TV. I don't know how; it must have cost a fortune and we were working class poor.

We never took a penny from the government. In those days you earned your own way. That's just how it was done.

Back in the early 50s, TV stations broadcast only a few hours a day. The rest of the time, the picture showed "snow" and the sound was a raspy, buzzing crackle. When you saw a "test pattern" like this, it meant that the station was getting ready to come on the air, or was done for the day and going off the air.

Sometimes, you saw it right in the middle of their broadcast schedule, and then a man would be telling you: "the problem is NOT in your set, we will resume broadcasting momentarily." (I grew up thinking momentarily meant tomorrow.)

Television programming was pretty sparse back in those days. Maybe nobody was sure the new medium was going to last and didn't want to waste much money on it. Maybe I just remember the entertaining stuff, after all, I was just a kid. I remember Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doodie, and then there was Kukla, Fran and Ollie, also Beanie and Cecil. All that was national network stuff. Locally they began to produce homegrown shows that usually involved some drunken pedophobe running 1930s cartoons for the "kiddies."

Then we had General MacArthur killing commies in Korea and Senator McCarthy finding commies under everyone's bed. Followed immediately by the Republican and Democratic National Conventions and I figured TV was ruined forever.

Fortunately, out local station used to fill in gaps in programming time by showing U.S. Military training and Information films. Probably because the Pentagon gave them away for free.

I recently found one of my favorites from back in 1953. I had thought I'd never see it again.

I wonder if you could get one of these from Army Surplus?

Afterthought: I've read that the Pentagon has been giving
surplus M-16s to police Departments so they can keep up
in the ongoing arms race against the barbarians.

Maybe they should give a few of these cannons to some
big city police departments. Could be an effective tool to
put down a ghetto riot without endangering any officers.